


A Question of Trust

by Severina



Category: Oz (1997)
Genre: Community: oz_wishing_well, Oz Free For All
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-02
Updated: 2010-06-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:28:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In theory, Toby is all for a paper-free environment.  In reality, he might need a little help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Question of Trust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [levitatethis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/levitatethis/gifts).



> Written for the Oz Free For All at LJ's Oz Wishing Well Community.  
> Prompt from levitatethis: "He crossed my mind. Somehow. He never left it."

Toby is all for a paper-free environment. He was the first in his office to advocate for the elimination of forms, and especially of forms in triplicate. He made client notes on a bulky laptop, not a yellow legal pad. He talked about reducing his carbon footprint long before the phrase was common, and he was the one who arranged for all the paper that the firm did still use to be shredded and recycled at a little plant in New Jersey.

In theory, Toby is a big fan of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

* * *

Toby, however, has never been a fan of the mail cart. His envelopes from home are either empty or contain letters that are so highly edited by Vern and his cronies as to be unintelligible. Over time, Toby has developed a dislike for black markers verging on obsessive.

But now, he hates the mail cart even more. He hates its colour, and he hates its squeaky wheel, and he hates--

"Here's another load," Vern says.

Toby is trying to find page four of a long-winded account of Dino Ortalani's "mother issues" -- and he's thankful that Sister Pete is neither as verbose nor as fucking sanctimonious as her predecessor, because if he'd been stuck typing up this shit for the last two years he might have had to shank himself to end his misery -- and at first he thinks he's hearing things.

A quick glance up from his desk proves him wrong.

"You have got to be kidding me," Toby mutters.

Toby's been working on the "O" box (except, of course, it's also the "A" box and the "D" box, because whatever idiot did the filing apparently thought that "Oskar Alameida" and "Oliver Dupont" should be filed under "O") and his attempt to put the files in some kind of order has resulted in a flow of paperwork that begins on his desk, spreads to the bookcase and the extra chair and ends in a perilous stack atop the "C" box.

"Getting a little backed up there, To-bi-as?" Vern crosses his arms and squints around the room in amusement.

Toby leans back in his chair, crosses his hands behind his head, and comes quite close to knocking the few papers he's managed to put into some semblance of order into a heap on the floor. So much for nonchalant. He smiles tightly. "Doing just fine, Vern."

"I can see that," Vern laughs. He shakes his head before turning to Sister Pete. "Where do you want these, Sister?"

'Um." Sister Pete looks like she might get up to direct him, but one look at the mountain of bankers boxes that are piled around her desk is enough to dissuade her. She taps a finger on her lip instead as she surveys the latest stack of boxes on the cart, then nods. "In the hall."

"You sure that's safe, Sister?" Vern asks, and Toby's fingers twitch with the urge to wipe the pseudo-concern off his smug face. "These files contain highly sensitive materials--"

"I'm well aware of what they are," Pete says sharply. "Put them in the hall."

Vern shrugs. "It's your ass."

Pete waits until Vern has manhandled the cart back out in the hall before rising and squeezing past the boxes to shut the door behind him. She puts her back to the door and sighs.

"I hate to say it, Tobias, but Vern's right," she says. "Those case files really aren't secure out in the hall."

"Not like we have much choice," Toby says. He starts to gesture toward the chaos, pulls his arm up short when he realizes the action will likely send the "P" box toppling. He shakes the file in his hand instead. "I don't understand why we need to transfer these old files anyway. Is anyone _ever_ going to look at Dino Ortalani's file? The guy's been dead, what, three years?"

"I know, Tobias, I know. But the Warden insists that this is the 'digital age.' He wants everything online and the originals shredded." She wrinkles her nose sympathetically. "Is there _any_ way you can move a little faster?"

"Sister, have you taken a look at these files? I could type out the reports in my sleep, but just trying to find what papers go with what file…"

Pete's gaze flits over the stacks of papers. "Mr. Grundl wasn't particularly organized, was he?"

"Not exactly," Toby murmurs. He drops Dino's file onto the desk and eases himself carefully from the chair (better not to be in a position of submission for this next part) and tucks his hands in his pockets (always best to look just a little innocent.) "You know," he says, "this would go a lot more quickly if I had an… assistant."

"Uh huh," Pete says. She cocks her head, looks at him shrewdly, and Toby wonders just how he ever thought he could put anything past her. "And let me take a wild guess at just who you'd choose. Chris Keller?"

"Well," Toby concedes with a smile, "he crossed my mind."

"Somehow I think he's never left," Sister Pete says. She pushes away from the door with a sigh. "I'm not sure this is a good idea."

"He says they're all caught up in storage, and there's no pending repairs to be done on any of the equipment." Toby tries for reasonable. He's good at reasonable. "He's a fast worker. He takes direction well."

"And you know this how?"

Toby flashes on Chris bent over him, on his hand wrapped firmly around Chris's neck, on his fingers gripping Chris's hips hard enough to leave bruises, on _faster harder now Chris now_. He swallows. "I've… seen him in action," he says feebly.

"I can imagine," Sister Pete says dryly.

"Sister--"

"I'll think about it."

"Okay," Toby says. "And Sister, he really wants to make it up to you ab--"

"I believe you have work to do, Tobias."

"Right." Toby takes his seat again, scrubs his suddenly-slick palms on his pants before resuming the search for that elusive fourth page of Dino's psych report. All in all, he thinks, that went… better than he expected, actually. At least she didn't say No.

* * *

Two days later, Sister Pete is in a staff meeting, Toby is trying very hard to concentrate on deciphering Grundl's back-slanted scrawl, and Chris is… Chris is….

"_Chris_."

"Mmm."

Toby pushes away from the desk and Chris's groping hands, takes a deep breath and tries to look serious, a rather difficult task under the circumstances. Because okay, maybe he _was_ leaning to the right to give Chris better access to his neck, and maybe he _was_ moaning a little. But that doesn't mean he _should_ have been.

"Chris," he says again, absurdly pleased that it comes out sounding like a normal word and not some breathy porn dialogue. "Stop it."

Chris grins slyly. "Right."

"I mean it. We have work to do, and--"

"What was the point of me working in here if we're not gonna fuck?"

"What?" Toby splutters. "We're not going to fuck!"

"Okay," Chris sighs, "_make out_. Whatever."

"Chris." Toby shakes his head. Sometimes it really _is_ like talking to one of his children. "The point is that we get to spend time together--"

"Yeah," Chris breathes. He stalks forward, and though Toby is fast, Chris is always faster. Strong hands on his hips and a tug is all it takes, and Toby finds himself pin-wheeling into the bookcase, Chris's body a long lean line against his. "We can spend time making out."

It takes a Herculean effort, but Toby manages to turn his head away. "Don't," he says.

Chris pulls back a little, cocks his head. "You're really serious about this."

"Sister Pete trusts us to behave ourselves," Toby says softly. "I don't want to betray that trust."

It's sort of a low blow, and he almost regrets saying it when Chris's chin comes up and his lips press together in a thin line. But as crazy as it sounds, and he knows from crazy, he really does want to prove to Pete that she can trust him -- that she trust in _all_ his decisions -- and Chris? Well, Chris has something to prove to Pete about trust as well.

"Fine," Chris says. He pushes away from the bookcase vigorously enough to cause the "K" and "Y" boxes to teeter perilously on their upper perch, but Toby quickly reaches out a steadying hand and is spared a concussion by the skin of his teeth.

He watches the stiff line of Chris's back as he walks away, feels the regret for what he said get stronger with every step that Chris takes away from him. "Chris--"

"No, we're good," Chris says. He looks up and smiles, all teeth and not a touch of the manic grin reaching his eyes. "I'll leave you alone."

Toby nods, but Chris has already bent to a new box, begun sorting through the piles of paperwork for another group of prisoners long paroled or dead. If he hears Toby's murmured "thank you", he gives no sign. Toby watches him for another moment and makes a mental promise to make everything up to Chris once they get locked in to their pod for the night. Then he turns his attention back to his typing.

For many minutes the only sound in Sister Pete's office is the tapping of Toby's fingers on the keyboard. He squints at Grundl's chicken-scratch scrawl, types out a few sentences. Squints and types, squints and types, and wonders what Chris is doing and really, he's been typing for… it must be fifteen or twenty minutes, surely he can take a quick break to…

No. Toby frowns down at the paperwork. Reminds himself to focus.

He turns to the second page on the report, almost snorts when he reads Grundl's conclusion that prolonged bedwetting as a child was responsible for Nino Schibetta's "anti-social tendencies." He forces himself to type out the asinine conclusion, proud of himself for resisting the urge to creative alter a report that nobody's every going to look at again anyway, and then there's just a few more paragraphs of follow-up and Chris is being awfully quiet.

It's not like Chris to be this quiet.

He needs to put the Schibetta file in the recycling bin anyway, so it's easy enough to casually glance over his shoulder. Just to check.

Chris has spread out the contents of the new box onto Sister Pete's desk, scanning each piece of paper before placing it onto the appropriate pile. One palm is flat on the surface of the desk, and Toby follows the line of Chris's arm to his thick neck, bent over the files in concentration, to the sculpted contours of his back, taut and muscular. When he reaches out to put another paper into place the muscles flex beneath his thin white T-shirt, and Toby's mouth goes dry.

Toby spins away so fast he crashes his knee into the desk and almost gives himself whiplash.

"You okay there, Toby?"

Toby thinks he hears amusement in Chris's tone, but with Chris he's never sure. "Just fine," he manages to grit out. And his hands are most definitely not shaking as he pulls out the next case file. He runs a hand through his hair as he flips open the manila folder, opens the document file on the desktop. He is calm. He is focused.

He gets halfway through the report from Tony Sciarra's initial psychiatric session before he again peeks over his shoulder.

Chris is bent over one of the bankers boxes, and honestly, Toby is pretty sure that an ass that magnificent ought to be illegal. When Chris moves, his already low-slung pants slide tantalizingly along his hips, and when he reaches for one of the files in the box his T-shirt rides up, revealing a thin strip of oh-so-tempting skin. It doesn't take much imagination for Toby to envision walking across the room, laying his hands on those hips and holding Chris in place, bending his head to lick and suck and nip at that enticing ribbon of skin.

Toby swallows convulsively. He turns carefully back to the desk, and tries to unobtrusively flatten a palm against his groin to still his burgeoning erection.

He blinks down at the open file. Manages to type out a few sentences. Sciarra was, apparently, a two-bit thief doing one to three for a drugstore burglary, probably an addict, and he probably never had anybody like Chris Keller in his life, Chris Keller who is right fucking _there_ and jesus, if there was ever a drug Toby didn't mind being addicted to it was Chris Keller, and…

"What am I, made of stone?" Toby mutters to himself before launching himself across the room. He has Chris pushed up against the wall in two point five seconds, a personal best, and flattens his palms against Chris's chest as he hungrily attacks his mouth. He feels Chris smile against his lips before Chris's arm comes up to wrap around his waist, to spin him toward the desk, and he's dimly aware of the spray of paper across the room, the crash of several boxes, of the clatter of Sister Pete's rolodex hitting the floor and the smash of the potted plant. But mostly he's aware of Chris's body pressed against his, of Chris's tongue in his mouth, of feeling like a starving man being given a banquet, and of how he was crazy to hesitate for even a moment.

This -- this passion, this emotion, this love -- this doesn't come around every day. Sister Pete can trust him on _that_.


End file.
